Here’s some links to where you can read, and hear, some of the excellent things said about The Intercorstal: 683. I am genuinely humbled by how nice everyone’s been about it so far.

Awesome Comics Podcast: The Intercorstal 683 was reviewed on Episode 46 (you should listen to the whole thing, but 683 is talked about specifically from about 132mins in) In addition to this, I was a guest on the show, talking about The Intercorstal and my involvement with London Super Comicon on Episode 49!

Today’s Small Press Day, and to celebrate I’ve collected some pages to make ‘Found Forest Floor’. It uses some pages I’ve created for the book I’m working on with Erik Blagsvedt and David Quiles Guilló for Abstract Editions, which should be out later in the year.

I’ll be carrying printed copies in various forms – some with dodgy printing, some at the wrong size, some with one-off covers around during the day to give away. I’ll hopefully pull some more together in the next few weeks for anyone who wants one but I didn’t see on the day (so, like…everybody).

And The Intercorstal: 683 Kickstarter campaign is live! And here, exclusively to intercorstal.com, and all the endpoints that it publishes to that I keep forgetting about, is the cover!

Head over to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grthink/the-intercorstal-683 to reach the Kickstarter page, have a look at my terrible video (I hadn’t realised until I watched it back just how much slow blinking I do when talking) and if you feel like getting a copy of the finished comic, pledge away! And if there’s something you were hoping would be on the reward tiers that you can’t see, let me know.

Once more, here’s that link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grthink/the-intercorstal-683

The Kickstarter campaign for ‘683’ starts on the 15th May. I’ll share the URLs and details once they’re live.

The reaction from review copies has been very positive, and I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out, so fingers crossed it’ll all work out. Hopefully you’ll hear what other people think in the near future.

I’ll be posting blogs related to the themes of 683 to my OTHER blog, garethahopkins.blogspot.com whilst the KS is going, so keep an eye out for those, too.

I’m currently planning a Kickstarter campaign to launch (and print) ‘The Intercorstal: 683’, which is an abstract anthology-style comic inspired by the British comics I was first exposed to as a child.

The comic’ll be 36 pages in total when finally completed, which includes the front and back covers, and I’ve got 32 of them done — each of the actual comic pages are done, and the cover. All I’ve got to do now is the ‘letters page’, the back cover, and two full page adverts.

I’m very close to fixing a launch date now — should be announced in the next couple of days. There’s a lot of work that goes into these things, certainly more than I’d bargained for.

As a ‘taster’, here’s the first version of the cover I did, which I’ve since rejected for (what I hope is) a better, fully painted cover.

Later this year, just as soon as the pages are finished, I’ll be Kickstarting ‘683’. In the meantime, I’ve decided to do something with the pages from The Intercorstal 2 which I’d set aside. I’ve selected 28 of my favourite pages and wrapped them up in little collections with the overarching title of ‘etcetera’.*

It’s the same 28 pages in each one, but the order of the pages as they go into each collection is shuffled slightly, so it’s unlikely that any two copies will have the same running order. Each one has a one-off cover, created with watercolour paint. And each one has its own individual title. They’re available to buy from my Big Cartel store.

There are two sizes: A4 and A5. The A5 ones are more compact, with the artwork filling the page, and read more like a comic. The A4 ones are pretty much the original scans but with the levels sorted out, and on the pages where the artwork is based on a page from someone else’s comic, there’s a note to say what the comic was, who the artist was, and who the writer was (I’ve not yet been able to work out a way to fit that info into the A5 ones).

Here’s some photos of the first four I’ve done.

I’ll be doing more in the next few weeks – keep an eye out as they get added/removed from sale. Any questions, feel free to comment here, or contact me on Twitter, or via email.

*’Etcetera’ is one of my favourite words, and I use it a lot. My other favourite words include, but are not limited to, ‘cuttlefish’, ‘massive’ and ‘antihistamine’.

As 2015 draws to a close, it’s probably a good time to review what the year has brought The Intercorstal, and what The Intercorstal has brought the year.

Firstly, there was of course ‘After Smith‘, the 10-page sequence produced for inclusion in Projectraum 404’s Abstrakte Comics series. As well as introducing The Intercorstal to Germany, it was mentioned in the German paper Taz, as well as getting a feature on Down The Tubes. Added to that was the gift of Tom Whiteley’s piece which accompanied the show, and can be downloaded here.

Page from The Intercorstal 683

My work on ‘683‘, took a pause whilst I worked on After Smith, and then again as I worked on ‘Neighbours Bring Food’, but is more than half-way finished now, and is working out pretty well. As long as everything goes to plan, there should be print copies available in March 2016. I’m also planning the follow-up to 683 already, after a few thematic things loops closed unexpectedly earlier this month. I’ll go on to that nearer the time.

2015 also saw the official close of ‘The Intercorstal 2‘ as a project. Always difficult to define, ‘2’ found me really testing what I could do with the project, eschewing some of the elements that I was no longer comfortable with (the eyes/teeth/hands motif for instance, which had been a defining element when the comic was first born) and developing new tools and ways of working. Without ‘The Intercorstal 2’ I’m not sure how to group the outlying pages that get done — my Deaths Head II or Dungeon Fun reworkings for example. I’ll come up with a name for them, I’m sure. I’m good at naming things.

Here’s some pictures to support this blog:

Photo of a Death’s Head II page completed whilst in Bremen for ‘After Smith’Prep work for ‘Neighbours Bring Food’ on display at Iridium, Kendal.